but he and house speaker john boehner both insisted they'd hold firm on whether or not to raise taxes on the wealthy. here are excerpts from the president's first comments on the subject since his victory tuesday night. he spoke to a crowd of supporters in the east room of the white house. >> as i said on tuesday night, the american people voted for action, not politics as usual. you elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. and in that spirit, i've invited leaders of both parties to the white house next week so we can start to build consensus around the challenges that we can only solve together. last year, i worked with democrats and republicans to cut a trillion dollars worth of spending that we just couldn't afford. i intend to work with both parties to do more, and that includes making reforms that will bring down the cost of health care so we can strengthen programs like medicaid and medicare for the long haul. i've put forward a detailed plan that allows us to make these investments, while reducing our deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade. i want to be clear-- i'm not